Don't Drop That Beat! Make Your Meter Clear

Some resources will say to strive for perfect meter, but in reality, a lot of rhyming picture books will not have perfect lines with exactly the correct number of syllables. You can actually add or subtract syllables for "metrical variance." This will help you fit words you wouldn't have been able to fit, or to change up the feel a bit. HOWEVER, once you've established how many feet you have in each line, you should not vary the number of STRESSED syllables. You can add or subtract unstressed syllables with care.

As a musician, I thought rhythm and meter would be easy to do in my writing. But I fell into one of the major pitfalls. Reading picture books is not the same as listening to a song (or even singing a song). In music, the beat and meter prescribes where the stresses go. You can sing words longer than a beat. You can have "rests" where you pause your singing and the beat will remain constant. But there isn't any sheet music to read or recordings to listen to for picture books. The rhythm has to be intuitive. The text itself has to prescribe the beat.

When you subtract a weak syllable from your line, you need to do it in a place that won't mess with the feel of your meter. The easiest place to make this work is the first or last (unstressed) syllable of your line. Another place that works well is the midpoint of a line, and usually where a comma or other punctuation fills the time with a "caesura" or pause.

I love writing rhyming picture books in anapestic meter. That's the meter that has a "foot" or pattern of two weak syllables followed by one stressed syllable. Look at this example:

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

This line is missing one of the weak syllables from the beginning of the line. Perfectly acceptable and incredibly common. Now consider if we drop another syllable between the first stress and the second stress.

There was a lady who swallowed a fly.

It's hard to read! The first two feet feel like they're trochaic, meaning the meter that has only one weak syllable followed by a stressed. But as we get to the third foot in the line, we've switched to anapestic. My advice: DON'T DROP THAT BEAT! The first two feet need to establish the pattern. I would advise not to drop syllables from both of the first two feet in a line. Is this a rule? I don't know. But it makes sense to me.

What if we instead drop a weak syllable AFTER the second foot.

There was an old man who swallowed a fly.

This is a common place to drop a syllable. It feels fine. Many times, you'll see a syllable dropped with a comma separating two phrases in the line.

I wonder what would happen if we dropped syllables later in the line. Would the established pattern be enough to keep us going?

There was an old man who ate a frog.

Hmmm. I don't know. What do you think?